If you have tried to come here in the past few weeks, you likely noticed a comedy of errors including weird formatting issues, being able to see the back-end of WordPress, and of course little-to-no updates.
Due to a combination of problems between my host and my own WordPress illiteracy, I had to switch servers, which involved the tedious process of moving over all the content post-by-post (I am sure an easier method exists, but again, WordPress is not my strong-suit). There are still a few issues I am working out like dysfunctional internal links and getting domain names to be the same as they were on the old site, but I am just relieved to have everything up again with a provider I now trust.
As I had mentioned in the past, a complete site overhaul was planned for December, and that has not changed. The current look is just a placeholder for now, however the revamp will also be very clean, minimal, and will utilize some amazing headshots that my brother recently took of me. That site debut will of course coincide with. . .
The second book. I am still waiting for the cover to be finalized before releasing any more details, but it will happen sometime in October. Currently I am working with a professional editor, and it makes me laugh to think that I ever considered not using one for this book. Not only is she helping me polish the whole thing stylistically and grammatically, she makes me ask myself the hard questions about the characters’ development and their underlying motives, things I never would have pushed myself to do if I were working solo.
I’ve also had a few good friends be kind enough to volunteer their time to do a read-through of the ‘rough-final-draft’ once I finish the current re-write. I am extremely excited (and nervous) to finally share what I have worked on nearly every single day since March with other people and hear what they think.
If you’re not in that group, do not fret, because in the week leading up to the book’s release (December 6th is the new the target date, formerly the 2nd), the first chapter will be available to download for free right here on my site.
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A few weeks ago I was also fortunate enough to have been interviewed on Skype by Vincent Nguyen of the fantastic self-development site, Self-Stairway. Vincent saw my 90 Strangers in 30 Days post on reddit and is going to be doing a case study on the project and myself in his upcoming ebook, The Compact Guide to Charisma, Confidence, and Being Well-Liked.
I can’t say that it wasn’t a little weird being interviewed about an idea that I had conceived in the shower one night last May, but I am still extremely flattered about the whole thing and am looking forward to reading Vincent’s book.
Until then, pardon my dust and look out for more frequent updates–if not by the end of the year, the blog game will be stepped up massively in 2014.
What works of pop-media (books, TV, music, movies, art) have had the most profound impact on your life?
For over two years, I would yammer to anyone that was even remotely interested in hip-hop about Macklemore. ”He’s a white guy from Seattle who raps about real issues and his life, not just 40s, bitches, and blunts, man,” or so my elevator pitch would go.
Recently, Ben (Macklemore) has experienced worldwide success thanks to the insanely popular “Thrift Shop”. I recently expressed my dislike for the song, which instantly brought accusations that my antipathy was only because an artist I had liked for a while suddenly became popular. This is a half truth, sure.
While I am subject to the phenomenon of snobbery that anyone who was a fan of an artist before they got big is, what actually ’bothers’ me is that of all his work, the song people now associate Macklemore with is the one with the least important message.
It’d be the equivalent of the most moving, dramatic, and soul-enriching film you’ve ever seen only being remembered by the masses for a scene that was merely comic relief.
And that’s exactly what I fear– that Mack will fade into one-hit wonder oblivion (yes, you could make arguments about “Same Love” also being a hit- I just wish it was as popular as “Thrift Shop”) and be remembered only as the goofy white guy that rapped about poppin’ tags and zebra jammies, when his lyrics have so much more to offer the world.
Ultimately, it’s not his success that bothers me at all, considering I used to tell anyone that would listen about his music. It’s just that I wish it was almost any other song of his that people got to experience first.
The source of this contradiction and, sure- selfishness- is that, more than any other musician, Ben has had a lasting and extremely positive impact on my life and creative pursuits, one that I can only begin to describe in this post. Thus, I have a strong emotional connection with his music, which doesn’t make me a bigger or ‘better’ fan of his compared to anyone else, it just makes me feel a certain away when I hear “oh yeah Macklemore, I know him, the Thrift Shop guy, right?”
But that’s the amazing thing about music, is it not? One song can mean a thousand different things to a thousand different people.
That, and as my brother put it so eloquently, I am going to miss paying less than a small fortune to see him live again.
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In my small effort to share the so-much-more Macklemore has to offer, here are five songs of his that inspired me to be more:
1. Inhale Deep
Cause it’s easier to spend your life drunk and high on drugs Than to put everything in a recording, put it out, and then get judged
I really paid attention to the lyrics and message in “Inhale Deep” when I was beginning the ascent out of what I consider to be the lowest point of my life. I devolved from leading an active social life and being on my college’s rowing team to falling into the 420 24/7 lifestyle, and my social circle consisting of whoever was out of their mind next to me on the couch staring at the TV.
For nearly two years, I had been in denial that marijuana had any kind of effect on my social skills, grades, relationship with my family. . .anything. After catching mono the winter of my junior year, reducing what semblance of fitness I had left to skin and bones, and giving me plenty of time in social isolation to evaluate where my life was headed, I started to see how much my lifestyle had been holding me back from reaching my potential.
“Inhale Deep” spoke to me at just the right time, in the way a song can come on the radio that perfectly describes your life and emotions in that instant. It was refreshing and a relief to hear that somebody else recognized the drug’s subtle power in stifling creative productivity and causing life to revolve around fear and anxiety, when everyone I had surrounded myself with at college was telling me the opposite, still in denial.
2. Vipassana
So I stare into this paper instead of sitting at a cubicle Take all the ugly shit inside and try to make it beautiful Use the cement from rock bottom and make it musical
A hip-hop song about meditation? It’s exactly as amazing as it sounds. The track peaked my interest in the practice, and now that it’s a daily habit of mine I can relate to many of the realizations and ideas mentioned in the lyrics.
The song touches on mindfulness, permanence, and other spiritual concepts that I was just starting to comprehend a little over a year ago. Around that time, going on a Vipassana (a 10-day retreat where you don’t say a single word the entire time) retreat also made its way onto my Bucket List.
3. Starting Over
But I’d rather live tellin’ the truth and be judged for my mistakes Than falsely held up, given props, loved and praised
To me, much of Ben’s appeal, more than any other artist I’ve ever listened to, is the pure unadulterated honesty about his life. A recovering alcoholic and drug addict, he recounts in detail the pain that falling off the wagon after three years of sobriety caused him, his family, and potentially his relationship with his fans. In a chill-inducing verse, Mack discusses having a fan come up to him just 48 hours after his relapse, confessing that she wouldn’t be standing there today if not for his music.
While the addictions I fought were undoubtedly very minor in comparison to what Ben went through, the song made me realize that this is one of the secrets to producing great art- telling the truth about life in the simplest and most relatable manner possible. For too long my writing endeavors were spent trying to please an audience that didn’t exist. This ultimately lead to frustration and little improvement in the craft. As soon as I started just writing whatever was on my heart and mind, several things happened- I started having fun again, my motivation to write everyday couldn’t be contained, and perhaps most rewarding, people began to reach out to me and tell me that they enjoyed my writing and that they could relate to my message.
4. Hold Your Head Up
Freedom is acknowledging the mask you have on And possessing the strength to take it off
The ultimate pick-me up/pep-talk track. “Hold Your Head Up”, with it’s mellow, rainy day kind-of-vibe, touches on all the truisms and cliches you become desensitized to from hearing so many times in your youth. Be true to yourself, accept the things you cannot change, choose your friends and job wisely, and so on. While such a song concept could easily come off as try-hard and cliche, Ben pulled it off in such a way that makes the song really hit home to absolutely anyone across all walks of life.
5. The End
I strayed, you brought me back in Trying to sneak a flask outside of that gym She said “You don’t need that, look within.”
At first listen, “The End” sounds like a charming recollection and romanticization of a high school prom or homecoming dance. When you examine the lyrics further and take into account Ben’s past, though, you start to realize that something bigger is being referred to. In my mind, he is using “Winter Ball 2012″ as a metaphor for his relationship with music, how he was scared of the places it would take him at first, how it makes him feel alive, and ultimately how it would save his life and take him to the heights he is today.
The dance could also be a metaphor for life in general, and his date reality, but however you interpret it, it’s one of the most touching, beautiful, and well-crafted hip-hop songs you will ever hear.
After six months of writing, editing, coding, testing, and coding even more, my first ebook is published and available on Amazon for Kindle e-readers.
It was an immense learning process, and through it I have gained a newfound respect for self-published authors (and code monkeys). Truth be told, I wrote the majority of the book in less than two weeks- the rest of the time was spent formatting and coding the text to look right on all e-readers- and it is still far from perfection. Sorry Kindle Paperwhite owners, I hope weird spacing on odd-numbered chapter titles doesn’t bother you too much. My sanity was at stake.
The book will eventually be available on Goodreads, Smashwords, Barnes & Nobles, and all the rest after my 90-day exclusivity contract expires with Amazon.
I know my audience with it is limited, but hopefully it can help guide at least one high school or college student who wants to work in sports and doesn’t know where to begin. In the least, it’s the first major independent project (not related to school or work) that I’ve completed. It’s also helped me develop productivity habits and a solid foundation of knowledge that will be a tremendous help to me as I begin to write my next book.
I know it’s been a long time, but I have been busy chasing the dream, I promise.
While I am still in the process of switching fields from PR to something more writing-intensive, I have taken these last five months to write my first book- How To Get A Job In Sports PR. It will be available digitally on January 3rd for a wide variety of e-readers on Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords.
Also in my time ‘off’, I revamped the blog by putting it on its own dedicated site. All of the “Most Important Things I’ve Learned” have been transferred over, as those will still be the centerpiece of my writing.
The Becoming Awesome Reviews are no more, as ultimately they felt contrived and I simply didn’t enjoy doing them. There will also be no set posting schedule this time around, although I imagine that with my recent productivity habits there will be anywhere from 5-10 posts every month.
This domain will now also serve as a pseudo-portfolio for potential employers to see examples of my writing (and hopefully my creative initiative). Up already are some work samples from previous jobs and occasionally I will post other writings from the past that I have dug up and want to share.
So, if you’re a friend who dutifully read my other blog, thanks for returning! And if you are a new reader, welcome!
I truly hope you enjoy reading these posts even half as much as I enjoy writing them.
No, (thankfully) not paralysis of my legs or any other appendage, but of my mind. Specifically, the creative side of it.
Ever since I was little, people had complimented my writing. Like how others are born with the ability to draw, sing, or dance well, writing came naturally to me.
Through my bashful humbleness, I always brushed these comments off as people just being nice, thinking to myself something along the lines of, “sure, maybe I can write better than Joe Shmoe classmate, but I could never be a sports columnist or fiction author. . .those people are in a whole other league, they have ‘it’. . .I am just me.”
I had planned and pursued grand writing endeavors before. This is actually around the third or fourth blog attempt (and at three months, the longest lasting) that I’ve made. Other past failures include several short stories and fiction books, as well as a column I planned to turn into an e-newsletter.
As soon as I hit any sort of wall in these projects, I was done- I quickly accepted my defeat without any sort of fight. I did this for many, many years. “It wasn’t meant to be”, I would think.
The big difference now in my attitude is that I enjoy the process– I like that I am no longer attempting to produce a polished final draft on my first attempt. I like that what I spit out on my first go is often utter crap. And I love that I get to scrap, mutate, and edit the hell out of the original piece until it is something I am proud of. And even then, it may not necessarily be considered “good” in the grand scheme of things, only in comparison into what it was a few hours prior.
Which led to a major epiphany. . . all creative people, all people who produce great work, have a produced a ton of crap. It’s a numbers game. Nobody bats 1.000. The larger volume of work you produce, the higher your odds are of breaking through that threshold and producing an amazing work. I’ll let Ira Glass say the rest:
It’s easy to look at people who have ‘made it’ already and think they just had ‘it’ from the get go. Rarely do we get to see the mounding pile of drafts crumpled up in their trashcans, all the missed free throws, or the sketches with giant X’s scrawled through them.
I recently read the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. In it, he cites another book that argues that Mozart wasn’t actually a child prodigy, but more a product of his environment and of consistent practice.
Wolfgang started writing music at age 6. While this is certainly an unusual and advanced hobby for a child of any age, the quality of these early works tends to get blown out of proportion:
“by the standards of mature composers, [his] early works are not outstanding. The earliest pieces were all probably written down by his father, and perhaps improved in the process. Many of Wolfgang’s childhood compositions, such as the first seven of his concertos for piano and orchestra, are largely arrangements of works by other composers. Of those concertos that only contain music original to Mozart, the earliest that is now regarded as a masterwork (No. 9, K. 2) was not composed until he was twenty-one: by that time Mozart had already been composing concertos for ten years.” –Michael Howe in Genius Explained
If Mozart of all people didn’t produce anything widely considered “great” (without the help of his dad) until he had been at it for over 10 years, it’s only fair that I extend to myself that, “hey. . .I’m going to make a lot of sub-par crap for a while before my work gets where I want it to be.”
Producing bad work is a great sign- as some crap is better than no crap, right?
